Bloomberg – Two Chinese companies left their plans to develop lithium processing projects in Chile after Metal price will collapseundermining the country’s commitment to add more value to its exports of the mineral.
Byd Co. and Tsingshan Holding group Co. will not continue with the projects to convert lithium carbonate into cathodes for batteries, the government confirmed on Wednesday. The representatives of Byd and Tsingshan in Latin America did not respond to the requests for comments.
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The discarded investments, of which the local financial financial newspaper reported for the first time, occurs at a time when Lithium producers fight to prop up their balances after prices fell almost 90% from a historical maximum reached at the end of 2022. Producers with higher costs are losing money After new supplies arrived on the market just when the demand for electric vehicles began to slow down.
“These companies have led to and arrested their investment intentions,” government spokeswoman Aisen Etcheverry, in an interview with CNN Chile. “It is basically for commercial reasons linked to the world lithium market.”
In April 2023, BYD was granted access to preferential prices for lithium carbonate produced by the Chilean SQM to feed a plant that would begin to manufacture iron and lithium phosphate for cathode at the end of 2025. But when prices, the giant of electric vehicles, failed to reach an agreement with the Chilean authorities on the project conditions on the project conditions.
In August, the executive vice president of Byd, Stella Li, said it was expected to delay the beginning of production while the negotiations continued.
-Tsingshan, the metallurgical group owned by billionaire Xiang Guangda, also obtained preferential access to Chilean lithium in 2023 for a processing project.
Catodo projects offered companies a support point in a country With the largest lithium reserves in the worldwhile for Chile, they helped an impulse to advance in the battery supply chain.
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“Actually, companies raised issues that go beyond difficulties with the government,” said the Minister of Finance, Mario Marcel, to the press in Santiago on Wednesday. “A solution was sought, but it was not possible to achieve it. Even so, the strategy of lithium continues.”
By the way, Chile began on April 30 a new bidding process for lithium at a preferential price produced by Albembarle Corp. (ALB), that is expected to be awarded to several interested partiessaid Wednesday in a statement Corfo, the agency that supervises lithium holdings.
With the collaboration of Valentina Fuentes.
Read more at Bloomberg.com
